Pain’s not new, for Jason. It’s been his shadow since childhood, followed him through every costume change, dogged him with each blow until he ended up worm-food. Call it whatever, he’s desensitized to it, now that he’s topsoil. He’d make a pretty godawful crime lord if he got hung up over every scrape and stab wound.

Which is why, awkwardly enough, it took coughing up an entire flowerhead before he realized—hey, that tightness and pain in his chest wasn’t just a bruised rib! Roy’s got it on record, the first time Jason spat out a petal, he stared at the offending plant before going “Gross,” and tossing it into the trash. Even after that, he thought it must’ve been a holdover from one of Ivy’s attacks. Bioterrorism and all that.

What else was he supposed to do? Frame it? Immediately assume he was being enough of a wuss that he sprouted goddamn feelings flowers in his lungs? Once he pieced everything together, everything simultaneously made more and less sense.

Jason doesn’t love anyone. Maybe he loves his gear, coming home at the end of the night to his bed, his well-worn book collection, trying out recipes he snuck from Alfred—but those are intangible. He doesn’t love people like that. Not enough to entrepreneur his own florist’s. Definitely not. His chest aches, and Jason twists to cough into his elbow.

He could get the surgery. He’s not an idiot, despite the looks Tim gives him and the ones Bruce tries to hide. Jason knows all about the infamous cure, he just thinks it’s stupid. It'd put a stop to his symptoms, sure, but then he’d be flipping the bird to the rest of his emotions. Jason doesn’t consider himself an emotional guy, or really all that in touch with himself; apathy scares him more than spitting up petals with his morning Cheerios.

He’s treating it the same way he treats all his other chronic illnesses: slapping bare minimum care onto it and muscling through everything else. Worked for him so far. This wasn’t anyone else’s burden but his own. The less everyone knew the better.